This is a cute little story that came to me for Halloween. I had no intention of writing a spookyISH story but when it came to me, I just jotted it down and it turned into this. With Halloween around the corner, I did not have enough time to sharpen this ten-chapter fic before I needed to start posting so that it is finished by October 31st. I must have added an extra month in between September and October because I thought I could but, alas, posting chapter one this week will only get me to chapter seven by Halloween, unless i double post twice for a few chapters. We will see.
I hope you enjoy this silly little fic that probably makes little to no sense since I did not have a lot of time to do a couple of really good edits like I usually do, so Let me know what you think. Reviews are always welcomed and encouraged!
Chapter 1—The Reading of the Will
"You know, I remember going there once when I was a kid and I hated it. Scared the shit out of me. It was the end of summer maybe when I was three or four and after that we never went back. At least I never did. I completely forgot about the place since," reflected Rick who got a chill down his spine just thinking about that old creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere.
The cabin was built by Rick's great grandfather Carlson Grimes and was passed down to each generation thereafter. It was not so much passed down, forced was a better word. Imposed by something dark and sinister. Procured against their will would be a better phrase for it. Rick's great grandfather died there, as did his grandfather Holden Grimes. And now his own daddy perished in that decrepit, old, musty wood dwelling.
Once his Grandfather Holden died, the family just stopped going. But it was not Holden's death that kept them away. He died during Rick's last visit. It was someone else's death. Someone closer to their little family that devasted Richard Sr., and Abby, his wife. Rick was still too small to really feel the full effects of the loss.
Holden was furious when his son brought his family out to that cabin to try and bring him home the day he died. They thought Holden had been sick, both physically and mentally. Richard Sr. thought his father had lost his grip on reality, or maybe his actions were just a product of old age. Whatever the reason, Holden began talking about voices and demons and such. He would go missing for days only to return home disheveled and disoriented. One day Richard got into his car and followed his father and found out about the Grimes Family Cabin, but with Holden in dire straits, Richard just placed is father in the car, ignoring his rantings about evil, and drove him back home. So when Holden went missing again, Richard Sr. took his family to where he knew his father would be. The cabin. He decided to take Abby and his children along to check out the place he would be inheriting.
Holden was crazed. He hollered at his son with such intensity, such passion, demanding that they leave him alone and never return. Richard, much like the Grimes men before him, and the one that he will raise, had a temper. In a fit of rage at the nasty, vile things that Holden was shouting at him and his family, Richard grabbed Rick and his wife and stormed out of the cabin.
Richard took his family, packed them back in the car and left. Rick was glad leave that dark place. That dingy cabin. It made Rick feel grim, his father too. Rick listened from the back seat as his father informed his mother that he felt sick while he was in that cabin. Richard Sr. said he felt WRONG. Rick looked at his brother, and Jeffery looked off. But Rick being three had no clue as to why, or the meaning of it. Rick grabbed Jeffery's hand and started to sing his little song. Rick was sad when Jeffery didn't join in as usual, but Rick just kept singing and holding his brother's hand. Richard Sr's mistake that day was not sticking to his guns, pulling over and going back to the cabin, after having calmed down.
An hour later, they returned, and Holden was dead. They called for the local coroner to pick up the body, mourning the first of two losses in twenty-four hours. The second loss was imminent. They stayed the night at the cabin, deciding to leave at first light back to King County. The hours Rick spent there that night were disturbing to say the least. Even at three years old, the cabin gave him chills and he could have sworn he heard thangs. Growls. Low in the throat snarls that sounded like they were right next to him. Close enough to his ear that Rick flicked at it to try and push whatever indecent thing that was making that noise away. As Rick observed the walls, he saw shadows of someone, no something. The shape of its body was more suited to something bent and broken. Bowed and crooked. Morbidly twisting as it slithered across the walls. Rick wondered how something could do that. Slither with a bowed body. Rick stuck close to his six-year-old brother Jeffery for a while, but then lost in a daze and starting at the menacing shadows, Rick lost track of his older brother.
Rick was startled from the faceless dark figure dancing for him in a morbid effort to entertain the tyke to keep his little eyes on it. The entity had little Rick in a trance for hours, only broken when he heard the wails of his mother, the cries of his father, and the shrieks of something lurid he could not place being only three years old. Rick did remember as he sat in the backseat arriving with his brother but leaving that eerie place without him. The confusing and depressing car ride home alone in the back seat scared Rick. He wondered where his brother was.
As Rick grew older, he blocked out the bad memories of that cabin and the two generations of Grimes men falling ill and dying there. Now three generations. Rick's father recently passed away while in that cabin and that was how Rick came to remember it when he did, during the reading of the will. The cabin immediately brought up ominous feelings for Rick. He felt deep in his bones that something was off about that cabin. Sinister. Made his skin goosebump. Rick tried to keep darkness it was invoking in him at bay, picking at him like a child will pick at a scab, relentlessly. He shook the morbid thoughts from his head and refocused back on the lawyer who was reading the will.
"And lastly, Rick, Your daddy had a dire message for you," Dale Horvath warned as he observed Rick and his family as they sat and listed to him detail the last will and testament of one Richard Harlan Grimes Sr.
Rick sat up straight in his chair as he grasped his mother's hand tightly in an effort to keep her from breaking down. To keep himself from losing it too. Rick needed the comfort as much as his mother did. Michonne sensed his need, and she in turn clasped her hand with Rick's other. The three sat, hand-in-hand, and for a quick second, Rick's mind fogged, and he felt a burst of coldness come over him. It was fleeting. Lasting less than a minute. Gone before he could process what it was that caused it. So quick that he forgot about the feeling quicker than he experienced it. Rick's breath hitched, he chilled, it went dark, then he was back in the warmth of his mother's and wife's hands. Rick hardly recognized that the glitch in his mind and body even happened.
Michonne noticed.
Rick's hand felt cold and a little clammy, but she held on anyway despite the odd fact that touching him all of a sudden made her skin crawl a little. Made her feel like she was holding hands with a corpse. It was a feeling she immediately felt guilty about because her first instinct was to harshly jerk her hand out of his. That strange wetness that flooded her the skin between her fingers, her palm, her flesh, felt like something was alive and crawling just under Rick's sweat and trying to prowl onto hers. It made her feel lightheaded. Michonne had the desperate urge to rub the offensive moisture away on the fabric of her black dress, then burn the ruined garment with its gory residue immediately once she removed it from her body.
The feeling was jarring.
Michonne's stomach dropped, nauseated that she had to sit through the insidious sensation that something alive was slithering all over her hand. Michonne closed her eyes and fought the repulsed feelings that Rick was inciting in her. She never would have thought Rick of all people would ever make her feel that way. Remorseful, Michonne gripped her mourning husband's chilled hand tighter in an effort to make up for her horrific impulse. She scooted closer to him for extra support, and when she looked him in the eye, there was a flicker, something grim just behind his baby blues. It was there, then just as fast, disappeared. Then Rick warmed again. The strange feeling gone. Her queasiness departed. The creepy-crawly feeling on her hand vanished.
Michonne was flooded with a sense of relief.
Michonne wanted to flex her fingers and rejoice in the absence of it all, but she kept a strong hold on Rick instead. But as soon as he let go, she knew that she would scrub that hand against the cloth that covered her leg that was currently bouncing nervously. Scour it until she erased any and all memory that it even happened. Unit she felt right again.
Michonne thought it was the sad circumstances that was causing her eerie feelings and shook them off the best she could. Just like her husband tried to shake his grisly mood. Rick looked to his wife who gave him a small, forced smile and a nod which was peculiar. He smiled abnormally in that repellent second where Rick felt…different…looked…menacing, and she turned her head from her husband to look forward at the lawyer. Her heart beating fast.
Then Rick was back.
And Michonne calmed, a little. And she looked back at Rick and smiled a genuinely comforting smile this time and laid her head on his shoulder for a few seconds. Rick knew Michonne was with him. Rick already knew that though. Michonne was and has always been his life support system since she and Andre came into his and Carl's life.
Michonne became his rock when he thought his life was nothing more than an avalanche of misery and distress. She brought him and his son back to life and Rick and Carl brought her back too. Both were reeling from very different, but equally sorrowful circumstances. Their deep love enlivened them all, spinning them back from a life of the walking dead they were both stumbling around in, smothering themselves in layer upon layer of dreary gray tints, and back to the living. Michonne let the sun into their life and Rick brought back the color in hers, and for that, Rick and Carl, Michonne and Andre, were indebted to each other. Bonded. They loved her with all their heart and soul, and she and Andre loved them just as much. They became each other's joy and light. After the last few years of depression and humiliation, grief and sadness, they were all happy again, living their best lives in bliss and thankfulness every single day. Rick and Michonne did that for each other and in the upcoming days, they would need to hold tight to that commitment. Continue to make sure to be each other's light in the very dark days ahead.
"O…Okay," Rick uttered clearing his throat after the ominous way Dale delivered the message.
"Rick, son," read dale from the piece of paper in his hand that was slightly trembling, "you found the love of your life and for that I am grateful. Carl found a woman, a mother, who is capable of loving him unconditionally, without the selfishness or stipulations that your former wife always held over both your heads. When you met Michonne, your mother and I breathed a sigh of relief. I love her like a daughter. Your mama does too. Take care of her and don't let her get away."
Rick smiled and looked to his wife and smirked, "I always figured he liked you more than me."
"He did son, he really did. We both did!" Chuckled Abby as she smiled kiddingly at her son, then at Michonne.
Rick shook his head. He was fine with that and appreciated that he and his mother could laugh during such a melancholy time. He chuckled thinking, once again, it was because of her, his wife, that he and his mama could take a moment of levity in right in the middle of so much brevity.
Dale continued to read, the paper shaking a bit more before, unable to control the anxiousness of his hands.
"Take care of your mama too. She will need you both. Mostly son, I need you to take care of yourself. What I am about to tell you, you might not believe, but I need you to. I need you to trust me that it is the God's honest truth and please, do what I ask. I want you to sell the cabin and never go there. It will pull you and tug you until all you want to do is to be at that cabin, even if you have to walk miles nonstop on bloodied feet. It will take its unnatural hands and grab you by the throat, leaving you breathless as it forcibly drags you to your grave. It's menacing grip will overwhelm you before you can even think to kick and scream and fight it off," Dale relayed.
The lawyer paused and looked at Rick whose brows were furrowed. Rick looked to is mother who was stoic and then to Michonne who looked confused.
"What?" Asked Rick thoroughly perplexed and then looked at this mother again, "Mama, what is this?"
"Just listen Rick. Go on Dale, finish," Abby instructed Dale who nodded and found the place he left off in the letter.
Rick did not want to hear anymore. But he listened for the sake of his mother.
"The cabin is calling me, and I know if I go, I won't make it back. There is evil there. Death. Destruction. Demons," continued Dale.
Rick tried to interject but Abby squeezed his hand tight for him to stop.
"Rick, calm down," Michonne whispered softly and looked Rick in the eyes, "It will be all right."
Rick pursed his lips tight and nodded for Dale to continue.
"I tried to knock it down. To level it and sell the land and get rid of the Grimes curse for good. But I was weak. It used my daddy, and my grandfather to pull me back, and your brother too. That house will use me too just get to you Rick. Carl too. STAY AWAY! AND DON'T LISTEN TO ITS CALL! Please son, be stronger than me. Don't listen. That is my final request. That is all I ask of you. Please, resist it. I don't want that cabin to take hold of another Grimes Man. I don't want that house to take another son of mine. It took Jeff when he was just six years old Rick. You were three I think, going on four when it happened, and I thanked God every day that you didn't remember what happened that day at the cabin. It drowned Jeffery out back in that damn treacherous pond," Dale informed as he read last Richard's words.
Rick stood up and started to pace. He was breathing hard and upset at this new information. He looked at his mother who made Rick no acknowledgement. She wanted to Dale to finish.
"Come sit Rick, ok?" Requested Michonne.
"Let me stand, I'm fine," replied Rick who was the exact opposite of fine.
"Finish," bid Abby.
"I don't even think that murky liquid is even water Rick, but rather some grisly fluid that leaked from that thing that's bound to that cabin. A dark and devilish pond it created to kill my little boy. That cabin got to him Rick, almost got you. Had you in a trance and after it was all over and I reflected on what happened here. It got your great grandfather, and your grandfather, your brother, and now me too. I can't fight it anymore. It's too hard."
Rick furrowed his brow and looked at his mama.
"Mama, I thought Jeffery died of pneumonia? Why did I not know he drowned at that cabin?" Rick asked incredulously.
"You knew, you were just too young to remember, and I did not feel the need to remind you son," corrected Abby.
Abby took a deep breath and could no longer hold back the sobs she was trying not to let loose, but the mention of her first born got the better of her. Michonne moved to sit next to Abby and hugged her through her cries. It took a minute for Abby to gather her thoughts. Her memories and senses were alerted to that dark time.
Like she was still standing in that cabin, Abby heard the foul and unnatural sounds right before Jeffery went missing and sitting in that law office, she placed her hands over her ears as if the vile racket of that cabin was happening in real time. As if she could drown it out like it drowned her oldest boy.
Michonne rubbed her mother-in-law's back to try and soothe her and looked up worriedly at Rick.
Abby turned her head slightly in revulsion as she remembered the sickening smell of the cabin in those few terrifying moments right before her son died. Abby sniffed the air in the office and turned her nose as the stench from the cabin overwhelmed her, a lurid bouquet of the decaying flora that surrounded the cabin mixed in with the odor of long dead burnt human flesh with an added whiff of rotten eggs. Sulfur Abby would later realize. Abby could taste it too. She turned her head and unintentionally spat on the office floor, appalled at the temporary loss of her manners, but the urge to spit was overwhelming. Michonne reached for a tissue in her purse and handed it to Abby who graciously accepted it. She used it to try and clear the disgusting tang of death from her mouth. It was of no use. It surrounded Abby. She knew something malicious was in that office with them. With Rick. Trying to make its presence known to her. To mock her and suffocate her last remaining hope that Rick would be spared. Abby knew it was going to try and take her last remaining son. And soon her grandsons. She felt the evil smile and breath a hotness on the back of her neck. Abby was at a loss at to what she could do and felt powerless. The only thing she could of to help was information. To let Rick know what happened in the past and what was coming for him in the future. Abby was desperate to make Rick listen. Make him understand.
Abby squeezed her eyes shut. Remembering that difficult time that was not hard to do as it was always on her mind no matter how hard to tried to forget. When she opened her eyes, she knew her husband and his kin were in that room with them. There to help push the demon away and provide her some comfort. Abby, and Abby only, saw the shadows causing an unnatural commotion around her, as they desperately tried to keep the filthy entity away from Rick.
It was over in the blink of an eye.
"What happened to Jeff mama? What happened in that cabin?" Asked Rick who just a second before had no clue why he felt as if he could not breath.
Rick thought it was the stress of the will reading. It was not. Rather a result of the thing his dead family members just beat back. Abby turned to her son and started her story of what happened in the cabin.
The cabin was separating them so that it could complete its wicked deed. It had just taken Holden, and now it wanted more. They were trying to leave the cabin when Abby noticed her son through the window headed toward that small and unassuming body of water. She was at first relieved that he got out of the cabin, then horrified when she saw him enter the water seemingly in a daze. She rushed to try and save him, but the door was stuck, it was not budge. Abby desperately called for Jeffery, screamed until her throat was red and dry but the clatter of the cabin, the blares of deviant sounds inside, silenced her frantic pleas to her son. She looked to her husband, and he was in a stupor too, looking at something, speaking to someone that either was not there or that she could not see. Abby had a strong and twisted feeling that it was the latter. Grasping a three-year-old Rick and holding him close to her chest, she punched her husband repeatedly to break the spell, but it did nothing. It was the voice that she could only hear, but could not see who it originated from, that broke Richard's spell. 'RICHARD! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! GET YOUR SON! SAVE YOUR SON!" A frightened and anxious voice shouted.
Richard snapped to and dashed for the back door, pulling his wife and youngest son with him. Try as they might, something was holding that door shut. Abby felt it breathing on her neck. Felt the teeth of it biting into her skin. She reached back to rub at the sore but was shocked that her skin was still smooth and unbroken. Abby was sure she would feel toothmarks, blood. Abby felt hands squeeze around her. Around baby Rick. Rick cried out in fright but more so in pain and that snapped Abby into action. She let go of Richards hands, his grasp trying to keep her place. To keep the thing inside that cabin from trying to pull her back deeper inside. They needed out, not back further in. But Abby broke free anyway and went to the small drawer and grabbed her weapon. A bible. She fought to open the drawer that was desperately trying to be stay shut. 'JESUS HELP ME!' Abby desperately cried and there was a temporary reprieve. Long enough for her to open that drawer and she wasted no time and grabbed the book and raced back to her husband. 'OPEN THE DOOR RICHARD! NOW!' Abby demanded as she placed the bible flush again the door. Richard opened the door and pushed Abby out first and as he stepped outside, something pulled him back. Abby screamed for her husband, but she needed to get to Jeff and Richard nodded for the to go. She threw the bible at her husband for him to use as a means of escape and with Rick held firmly, she raced to the pond.
Richard turned and faced the bible towards that thing that he could see, but only Abby could feel and hear. Then he looked beyond the vile creature and saw his father.
"THROW THE BOOK AT IT SON AND RUN!' Shouted the spirit of Holden Richard Grimes, and Richard listened without hesitation.
He threw the bible, and it was a direct hit and the perverse thing twisted into a loathsome and mishappened mess. The evil hideous thing hollered out in the most terrifying and warped demonic voice filled with hatred, pain, and suffering, all wrapped in a howl that no earthly animal could possess.
Richard ran outside towards the pond and did not look back. He ran until he got to his sobbing wife, who was holding her youngest with one hand, while pulling her oldest son's unconscious body out of the pond with the other. Richard splashed into the murky dark water that he knew sought to keep him in, but he fought the gory liquid and grabbed his son and immediately began life saving measures, but it was too late. Abby was screaming for him to continue his compressions. Continue mouth to mouth to save her six-year-old boy. She did not realize the life savings methods were of no more use. Staring unbelievably at her son's stilled body, she did not notice Richard crying as he watched the spirit of his now dead son move close to him to whisper a message into his ear.
"I wanted tell you, but your father insisted we not. He feared you would want to go back to that cabin where he died, where they all died. Richard was terrified that the cabin would suck you into its clutches. I don't know if you would believe it or not, but son, I am dead serious. That cabin is evil. I seen it for myself. Experienced it. Lost two loves of my life to it. What we saw and what he heard that day. It scared me to death, and I did as our father asked, I will not lose you too Rick. I won't!" cried Abby.
Rick eyed his mother and was startled back to focus on what they were at the law office to do. Listen to the reading of the will. Rick nodded for Dale to continue and Michonne continued to wrap her arms around Abby while Michonne herself was in a state of pure terror and disbelief at what she just heard.
"Seeing Jeff's spirit about nearly broke me. Jeffery whispered for me to protect you, Rick. To keep you away, keep you safe and I could not lose you too, and I did, until now," continued Dale, "Anyway I gotta stop, I am having trouble thinking. The call of that cabin, that thing, is all I hear now. That voice is in my head, and it sounds like my daddy, like my Jeff, calling me home, but I know it aint. I know it's that thing. I know it's that evil, but I can't help but listen Rick. Even though I know better. It's like it takes over my mind. My actions. Like I aint me anymore. It will call you too Rick, be vigilant and be careful. I am trying not to hear it. The cabin's call is too strong now and I know I have to go. I love you son. With all of my heart. Please do as I ask, get rid of that cabin. Don't go there. Just demolish it and forget that it ever existed. If I could have, I would. But It wouldn't let me. I would not even have let you know it was in the family, that the cabin even existed, but with my death, it would be a matter of time before the deed was found and turned over to you. But I am sure that evil would have called out to you long before that piece of paper was found. So I am warning you now. Let that go, please. Don't let that cabin take you too. Don't listen to the call son. Don't listen. Love Dad."
Dale finished and the whole room to a collective breath. Abby saw the questions written all over her son's face. She also observed that Rick already heard that evil, felt it. He had the same look on his face minutes ago that her husband had back at the cabin before she and that voice disrupted the stupor. Like she remembered Rick looked when he was three and staring at the wall in a trance.
"Ask the questions now son, because after we leave Dale's office, I am done with that cabin and every question about it," commanded Abby bracing herself.
Michonne hugged Abby tighter.
"Mama, daddy had dementia there towards the end, you know what he said in letter ain't true right?" Questioned a worried Rick.
"Your daddy was as lucid and sane as they come son, he didn't have dementia. That house took hold of him. Of his mind. And all he wanted to do was get there. It grew stronger every day, tugging at him, luring him, until that night I woke up and saw your daddy was gone. Before we went to bed that night, he said he kept hearing Jeff calling for him. Kept hearing his daddy and grandaddy whispering to him to come home. I knew as soon as I felt his empty side of the bed when I woke up that morning that he was there. A few hours later, I felt my heart break and I knew he was dead, but not gone. He is at that cabin. With that thing that took em."
"Mama," sighed Rick.
"HE WAS NOT INCHOHERENT RICK! YOUR DADDY WAS SOUND AND YOU NEED TO LISTEN!" Hollered Abby who fully broke down in Michonne's arms.
Rick furrowed his brow, then got up to hug his mother. He looked at Dale and asked for the deed. Rick was stubborn. He wanted to get to the bottom of what happened to his daddy at that cabin. He needed the address. He needed to go. Rick did not realize that desire was not a natural one. He did not comprehend that the noise in his head was coming from a very dark and evil entity that found him in that law office, vulnerable with a soul so very plump and ripe for the picking.
The demon closed his eyes -in pure unadulterated ecstasy and spat its blood red, serpent-like tongue, licking its lips with the foul fluid dripping with a pungent thick substance that dropped down its chin as yearned for a taste of another Grimes man. That cabin had already started to influence Rick and wrench his mind into believing the cabin was his answer. The cabin was the food that Rick needed to satiate his appetite. The entity smiled from that great distance when it sensed it had him it its filthy grip. The demon pulled its slimy pitch-black mouth into a foul imitation of a smile and then grinned wider when it realized that Rick had sons.